A Cincinnati company is requiring any employee who
works in its secure data center to be implanted
with a microchip.

The video surveillance company CityWatcher.com injected
two of its employees in the triceps area of the arm with the VeriChip, a
glass-encapsulated RFID, or radio-frequency identification, tag, according
to Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and
Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID."

CityWatcher.com's Network Administrator Khary Williams
spoke with McIntyre by phone Wednesday after the company announced it had
integrated the VeriChip VeriGuard product into its access control system.

The tag can be read through clothing from a few inches
away.

The highly controversial device is being marketed as
a way to access secure areas, link to medical records and make purchases
like a credit card.

As WorldNetDaily reported, when former Secretary of
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson joined the VeriChip Corp.
board of directors, he pledged to get chipped and encouraged Americans to
do the same so their electronic medical records would be available in emergencies.

But McIntyre and co-author Katherine Albrecht contacted
VeriChip Corp. in December and were told the chipping never took place.

VeriChip spokesman John Procter said Thompson had been
"too busy" to undergo the procedure, adding that he had no clear
plans to do so.

CityWatcher's Williams said a local doctor already
has implanted two of the company's employees with the VeriChip devices.

"I will eventually" receive an implant, too,
he added.

Meanwhile, Williams accesses the data center with a
VeriChip implant housed in a heart-shaped plastic casing that hangs from
his key chain.

He told McIntyre he had no reservations about having
the procedure and would do it as soon as time permits.

But McIntyre says she's worried that CityWatchers –
a government contractor specializing in surveillance projects – would
be the first publicly to incorporate the technology in the workplace.

CityWatcher provides video surveillance, monitoring
and video storage for government and businesses, with cameras set up on
public streets throughout Cincinnati.

The company hopes the VeriChip will bolster its proximity
or "prox" card security system that controls access to the room
where the video footage is stored, said Gary Retherford of Six Sigma Security,
Inc., the company that provided the VeriChip technology.

"The prox card is a system that can be compromised,"
said Retherford, referring to the card's well-known vulnerability to hackers.

He explained that chipping employees "was a move
to increase the layer of security."

"It was attractive because it could be integrated
with the existing system," he said.

McIntyre points out, however, researchers have shown
the VeriChip to be vulnerable to hackers.

Security researcher Jonathan Westhues showed last month
how a hacker can clone a chip and theoretically duplicate someone's implant
to access a secure area.

Westhues believes the VeriChip is not secure and "not
good for anything."

"No one I spoke with at Six Sigma Security or
at CityWatcher knew that the VeriChip had been hacked," said McIntyre,
author of a chapter titled "Hacking the Prox Card" for Simson
Garfinkel's recent "RFID: Applications, Security, and Privacy."

"They were also surprised to hear of VeriChip's
downsides as a medical device," he added. "It was clear they weren't
aware of some of the controversy surrounding the implant."

Albrecht says that while CityWatcher.com does not require
employees to receive the chip to keep their jobs, the company is establishing
an unsettling precedent.

"It's wrong to link a person's paycheck with getting
an implant," she said. "Once people begin 'voluntarily' getting
chipped to perform their job duties, it won't be long before pressure gets
applied to those who refuse."

Albrecht believes the VeriChip will be hard to sell
when people learn of the security flaws, combined with a general squeamishness
about implants.

"Obviously, nobody wants their employer coming
at them with a giant hypodermic needle," she said. "But when people
realize it takes a scalpel and surgery to remove the device if it gets hacked,
they'll really think twice. An implant is disgusting enough going in, but
getting it out again is a bloody mess."

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